Columns

Sometimes I don’t always plan as far ahead as I should. Some may call it procrastinating, but I’m not ready to cop to that. Rather, I see planning for things at the 11th hour as a sign of extreme flexibility and a way to make every day a new adventure. My wife, however, vehemently disagrees.

However, for this year’s Shelby American Automobile Club’s National Convention, known as SAAC-42 to the faithful, I was pretty damn proud of my advance planning. Read More

About once a week, usually as I’m leaving my house in the morning in my white 2016 GMC pickup, I hear a little voice. It pipes up as I drop the shifter silently into gear, lamenting the fact that last year, I sold my noisy old orange-and-white 1972 Chevrolet K10. Sometimes that voice also brings up my rumbly old 2006 Charger SRT8 for additional impact. They were so cool. Why did you have to sell them?

Chad Tyson’s farm-fresh 1963 Ford F-100 unibody is almost completely stock from nose to tail, from the 292-ci Y-block V8 to its granny-geared 4-speed and drum brakes. Compared to modern trucks, it’s slow and doesn’t stop well. But a driver can compensate for that by just leaving more room and never being in a hurry. Trucks like this are about enjoying the ride, right?

But summer is here, and if you want to actually use your old car or truck, Read More

Back in April, the all-new Dodge Challenger Demon hit the scene. By now, I’m sure you’ve heard all the metrics: 840 horsepower, 9.60s in the quarter, supercharger feeding on cold air from the a/c system, and a transbrake to help yank the wheels off the tarmac. Dodge plans to lash together 3,300 of these monsters for the U.S. and Canada this year. Dodge now owns the top-dog spot in the current muscle-car wars — as they’re building the next-level — Read More

Half-life” (denoted in scientific equations as t½) is the principle typically used to measure how long radioactive decay takes to reduce something to half of its initial value. Scientists, of which I am certainly not one, seem to think t½ is constant. I, perhaps due to the previously mentioned lack of education in this realm, do not — at least not as it applies to old car parts. To me it seems like this half-life thing is accelerating at an Read More

When the Vega program was introduced in 1970, GM’s CEO Ed Cole also went forward with a program to build the Wankel rotary engine under license from NSU. The original intent was to offer it in a sporty new fastback hatchback design called the Monza 2+2 for 1973, and then later offer it in the Vega as an option.

While sharing the Vega’s body pan and wheelbase, the 2+2 was four inches longer overall and wider between the front strut Read More

Shiny, deep paint has always been the go-to for car people looking to turn heads with their classic cars. But for car purists — especially those concerned with originality over everything else — there’s nothing better than having that OE paint on your classic.

For years, original paint wasn’t a priority for many car restorers, and that has made original-paint cars relatively rare today — with those cars that do have OE finishes sometimes valued higher than their resprayed counterparts, Read More

If you can call Henry Ford one thing, it’s persistent. His disdain of 6-cylinder engines dates to the teens of the last century, mostly out of spite of his competition.

When Ford’s son Edsel pleaded with him to expand from the Model T and Model A 4-cylinder platform, Henry wouldn’t hear about a six. Even odd and exotic combinations such as Henry’s fascination with the X8 were always up for consideration, but never a six. Indeed, he leapfrogged past any Read More

I purchased my first “winter beater” when I was in high school. Yep, it was a 1966 New Yorker. Mine was a Town Sedan — the bottom-of-the-line 6-window, 4-door post car. It was your typical Midwestern Mopar, its white exterior under siege by rust, yet its bright red interior decidedly mint. But the real attraction was its 440-ci 4-barrel engine with 350 hp and 480 lb-ft of torque.

This month’s Readers’ Forum question is all about our best car buys — those cars that were steals, deals, or just turned out to be a lot better than we ever dreamed they would. For some of you, it was a brush with an icon, like a 427 Cobra or Ram Air Firebird for a lot less than the current market level. For others, it wasn’t about rarity but instead accessibility — Cutlass Supremes, Mustangs, Corvettes, and so on.